


Discourses in Management (Lab)

by rageprufrock



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5926021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because they've been given the keys to the enterprise doesn't mean Kirk and Spock don't have to finish their coursework. Abandoned WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discourses in Management (Lab)

Jim has just explained how he more or less single-handedly saved the entire population of the — holy shit! — Earth when his mother’s mouth folds into the same look of horror they got when Jim got hauled into the principal’s office for fighting and she says, “James Tiberius Kirk — that is _terrible_.”

“ — and then I totally — wait, what?” he says, his brain making a U-turn from AWESOME SPACE GLORY into WTF.

She keeps frowning at him. “Terrible,” she repeats.

Jim blinks at her. “You wanted Nero to destroy the Earth,” he says uncertainly.

“Don’t be flip with me, James,” she sniffs. “Firstly, I’m sure that this is all classified and it speaks poorly of you that you’re already babbling it to me — ”

“You’re my _mom_ ,” Jim argues, even though she’s right and it is.But he’s supposed to be telling the general population it was a freaking _gas exploration accident_ , for crying out loud, and his mom’s not a moron.

He’s only on Earth again for the mandated, advanced leadership training, a stream of courses including such gems as Intergalactic Diplomacy 310 (Seminar) and Discourses on Management (Lab), and what the fuck, how do you lab management?If the goal is to prove that torture actually is effective it is fucking working, because Spock’s in all of these classes with him and Jim squirms just thinking about it.

“And secondly, I hope you apologized to poor Spock about what you did,” she concludes, making the most horrible cow eyes of disappointed motherhood that Jim has ever seen. 

They’re right up there with when he threw his step-dad’s car off that cliff face or the time she caught him setting ants on fire.They’re almost as bad as that bland look of Spock’s that says he’s utterly unsurprised whenever Jim fucks up in some spectacular way, like the simulation where he had to pick between jettisoning half of his crew into frozen space death and completing the mission or having everybody live and spurring a war between Generic Planet A and Generic Planet B.He’d obviously chosen wrong and afterward, with Spock staring flatly at him with his most disappointed and expressionless look, Jim had shouted, “What, so you wanted to die?” 

He has a half-dozen arguments for why he shouldn’t apologize to Spock, and most of them start with the word “But!” and all of them die on his tongue the longer he thinks about it, the longer he stares at his mother’s face.

He talks, maybe, once a week to his mother, and they’re mostly proscribed conversations where he talks about the Starfleet Academy and lies a lot about the weird rash he’s developed. Still, the thought of her gone, of her falling through his fingertips as Earth is swallowed up, makes him ache.

He stares at her, she stares back, and probably because she’s lived longer or had a baby in a shuttle while a spaceship was fucking exploding behind her or something, Wynona wins the badass competition.

“Fine,” Jim mutters. “I’ll apologize.”

***

Easier said than done, since Spock is a God damn robot and Urhura keeps trapping Jim in the hallways of the Starfleet Academy with her (hot, hot, totally hot) cat eyes of evil and making hissing noises at him.

“I’m your captain, you know,” he tells her one time.

Whatever she says to him in response is in Vulcan, and probably really wrong, because Spock actually blinks — twice — in rapid surprise, and later on absolutely refuses to translate, despite Jim threatening to write him up for insubordination. 

His only blessing is that Uhura eventually does get conscripted into an entirely different set of advanced classes, and when Jim walks into Discourses on Management (Lab), she’s nowhere in sight — just a half-dozen other new officers, their teacher, and Spock, looking somehow placid as a river and furiously annoyed at once.He doesn’t know how Spock does it, or when he went crazy, because Jim finds it weirdly endearing, and drops down into the uncomfortable plastic seat next to him.

“Captain,” Spock says, nodding his head in acknowledgment.

“You can call me Jim, you know,” Jim says.“Even McCoy does it.”

Spock only blinks at him, almond eyes dark and deep.“As I understand it, Dr. McCoy is your friend,” he says after a pause.“I am not.”

Jesus fucking Christ, Jim thinks.This is why Vulcans don’t have friends and nobody fucking apologizes to them.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jim says. 

And before he can say something like, “look, my mom’s making me apologize to you about being a dick before, you know, when we had to save the world,” the instructor rises, clapping two of of her four hands together for order before puffing her gills gently out toward the class, welcoming.

“Everyone, it is a pleasure to be with you here today,” she chirrups, her voice a harmony of minor keys.Jim doesn’t remember what specific species she is, but he remembers an image of her soothingly gray-blue skin, the lovely darker shade around her perfectly round eyes and cupid’s bow lips.“I appreciate your time, and hope that this course will serve you well — leadership is more than being a brilliant tactician, it is also in learning to maneuver your most valuable resource: your crew.”

“Oh God,” Jim mutters under his breath.“We better not have to do trust falls.”

He can’t decide if it’s better or worse that, instead of trust falls, they’re doing some sort of exercise where he and Spock have to talk about feelings. Jim can’t keep the Look off of his face when their instructor explains the assignment, and it’s hard not to have a sudden flashback to getting paired up with the kid who ate paste only when he tired of eating his own boogers during the second grade.

“I find this assignment to be specious at best,” Spock declares, in full hearing of the teacher, and Jim says, “oh God.” “Even if your feelings became engaged during a mission it would be irrelevant, I presume, to your decision-making process.”

“I think what she means,” Jim tries, “is we have to talk about our feelings on leadership. Just you know, in general.”

Spock blinks at him, lids heavy and a half-beat too clinical to be sultry, but it’s discomfiting how narrow a half-beat difference that actually is.

“As I am do not make management decisions predicated on emotions, I do not see the point to this exercise,” Spock says, and Jim would call anybody else using that particular tone of voice snotty, but not many other people have handed Jim his own ass quite the way Spock has — which, hypocrisy, thy name is fucking Vulcan. And anyway, the teacher is watching them.

Rolling his eyes, Jim says, “Yeah, okay, you never let your emotions rule you. I got this black eye from walking into a door.”

“Technically, your eye was never black, and now it is the color of rotting fruit,” Spock corrects, unrepentant. “And only when one examines your face at a very close distance.”

“How’s it going?” the instructor asks, her voice a harmony, hovering nearby.

“Futilely,” Spock volunteers at the same time Jim says, “Shitty.”

The teacher makes a noise that sounds like bubbles, but it creases her face and her eyes like a laugh. “New officers frequently will find some friction working with one another, it is one of the primary reasons Starfleet invests so much time into your training,” she assures them. “What seems to be the dilemma?”

“This exercise is a waste of time,” Spock explains flatly.

“He’s Vulcan,” Jim says.

The teacher frowns at them. “I see.”

That’s how they end up doing trust falls after everybody else is released for lunch. It goes about as well as Jim had expected.

***

Being captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise comes with surprising ease to Jim. He isn’t wracked with recrimination and second-guessing the way a lot of his classmates were, and he isn’t often given to regrets. He wasn’t lying when he told Spock he doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios.

Still, making a decision is different than living with it. His mother used to say that God doesn’t give more than a person could take, which Jim always ignored based on the fact that (a) the idea of a monotheistic overlord was dubious, at best, and (b) Jim hadn’t ever seen much ‘giving’ when it came to God, just taking. Only now God — if there is one — has given Jim Spock for a first officer and Jim just has to take it.

“First thing in the morning, an Andra’ack female lieutenant comes to you complaining that a human male has claimed she is without virtue in a public arena; the human male, when you confront him, is genuinely confused and says he made no some statement. What may have happened? What are some possible solutions to this problem?” Jim reads out loud.

Andra’acks are one of those reclusively, heavily shame-based societies that Jim always found boring in his xenocultural studies courses, so of course the sum total of what he knows about that entire race is that it exists, and that not knowing anything about them will probably make Spock look gravely annoyed with him some more — a pretty remarkable trick given that Spock moves maybe one muscle in his face an hour.

“The human male probably directed a greeting toward her that referenced the morning,” Spock says after a moment of consideration. “In Andra’ack culture, only a female’s mate may make references to morning, as it it so closely tied to the night previous and therefore a sexualized statement — such a casual salutation could be taken poorly by a particularly sensitive crewmember.”

Jim stares. “Okay,” he allows.

Space is sometimes seriously seriously stupid.

The list of possible acts of harassment to crewmembers range from the Should Be Obvious (“To the vast majority of planets within the Federation, manual sexual manipulation of a strangers genitals is not considered an acceptable first greeting,” Spock says) to the Jim Figures Spock Is Totally Shitting Him (“Captain, if you simply acquired a reference text you could locate the entry regarding Coreenian visitor fertility rituals on your own,” Spock sighs; “I don’t need to, all I need to know is that we’re never going to that planet,” Jim tells him).

The only saving grace is that after two days of this they have to skip out on the rest of the semester when the Admiral Pike sends them out on a milk run, and Jim gets to tell their teacher — who now mostly frowns at them — he and Spock have to go do their patriotic duty and stop talking about all the various ways when Jim blinks wrong somebody thinks he’s referencing having anal sex with an animal.

“It’s a shame, really,” he lies.

“Oh, don’t worry, Captain,” she answers serenely. “You’ll be required to complete this course one way or another — you may pick up where you and Commander Spock have left off the next time you’re on Earth.”

“What?” Jim says. “No.”

“Yes,” she disagrees, and smiling at Spock, informs him, “Commander Spock, I’m sure you’d loathe to have your current performance act as a blemish to your otherwise stellar academic record with Starfleet.”

It’s probably the only possible thing she could have said to make Spock give two Vulcan shits about Discourses on Management (Lab), because he spends the entire car ride to the shuttle hub on his handheld glowering at the screen, his eyebrows sharper and angrier than usual.

“What,” Jim asks, “did she give you an A minus?”

“Unacceptable,” Spock grinds out, slamming the power button on his handheld with a lot of fury for somebody unfettered with human feelings. “A C.”

“Oh,” Jim says feelingly, “fuck.”

***

Jim would chew off his own arm before he admits it to anybody, but he finds Spock interesting.  Not the way that he finds his academic pursuits interesting or how Bones can get tunnel vision when he’s investigating some unknown variant of a disease, but _interesting_ , like something that’s crept under his skin and leaving a trail of phantom touches there.  Spock veers between being perfectly Vulcan — logical, brilliant, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth — to exquisitely and fallibly human.  He talks in a constant dialect of mild condescension, but when Chekov starts babbling math at him his eyes go a little softer, the corners of his mouth less severe; and when Uhura catches him in unguarded moments, Spock’s voice changes entirely, rounding out on vowels and affection.  Most intriguingly, none of it is an act, all of it, every instance of elegant genius and each fit of prissy first officer PMS — that’s all Spock, that’s all the same person.

“It’s sort of like he’s the crazy hot girl, you know?” Jim says.

Bones makes a pained expression.“Oh my God, what is wrong with you?” 

“I’m serious: he’s just so, so goddamn good — ”

“You better fucking mean at his job,” Bones cuts in.

“ — but he’s _such a bitch_ ,” Jim finishes.“Like _such_ a bitch, and he’s always getting mad about inexplicable stuff.”

Pouring another finger of Cardassian vodka, Bones says, “Spock getting pissed with you is hardly inexplicable — if anybody is a crazy hot girl, it’s _you_.” 

They’re sitting at the stickiest part of a bar counter on Vega X.Jim has a serious suspicion they’ve accidentally walked into the tenderloin district of the city — there seems to be a lot of ass for sale is all he’s saying — but the drinks are cheap and Spock more or less kicked him out of engineering for, quote, “becoming an unbearable nuisance to myself as well as my staff,” so it’s not like he had anything better to do than hand the comm to Sulu and go find Bones.

“Bones, I’m flattered,” Jim purrs, lipping his glass of kanar.

“No, you’re fucking _crazy_ , that’s what,” Bones curses him bitterly.“This was supposed to be a goddamn _milk run_.”

Jim frowns.“We arrived, we assessed the situation, and recognizing that it was more complex than had originally been advertised we reacted appropriately.”

“You helped the minority faction stage a coup and now we have to stay here an extra week to help maintain stability until higher ups at Starfleet can decide how many of them are going to get to fist you in a public square,” Bones snaps at him, downing his glass as if it were a shot.McCoy had always been sort of a functional alcoholic but honestly, this was kind of overreacting.

“They were violating the Treaty on the Rights of Sentient Beings left, right, and center,” Jim argued.“We have an obligation as agents of peace not to let that go on.”

They’d been coercive slavers, using a system of indentured servitude you never really managed to earn your way out of; more than half the population worked, unpaid, without contract or recourse, and Jim had seethed, sitting in the high council’s chambers on Vega X.It hadn’t helped when he’d seen Spock, his hands clasped fiercely behind his back, pale and bloodless as he squeezed his own fingers — a tell, one of the very few Jim had found so far.

“It just blows my mind that Spock didn’t stop you,” Bones mutters, and Jim can’t stop the brilliant smile that spreads across his face, reflexive.

Spock has made it abundantly clear he can beat Jim until candy comes out, so he refrains from telling Bones the truth, but in his head, it’s bright and clear and as obvious as anything.At heart, Spock’s a soft touch, and for his stupid Kobiyashi Maru test, he’s an idealist — it’s the only possible reason that, when Kirk had said, “We have to do something about this,” Spock had just cocked one brow and said, “Indeed.”

Jim knows better than to tell Bones about how there’d been a moment, after all the noise and shooting ended, that Spock had looked at him with something like approval.Jim’s a junkie for fast cars and fast ships and fast women, but nothing, none of it, prepared him for the adrenaline rush of Spock’s mouth, quirking into the tiniest of smiles. 

“The truth is that Spock’s just as bad as me,” Jim says, because he thinks it’s true and he thinks that maybe he and Spock both hate cruelty, injustice the way you can hate it only if you’ve been the victim of it before.

Bones points at him, glaring.“Don’t say that to me, Jim,” he warns.“You don’t want to make a grown ass doctor cry.I hate that pointy-eared hobgoblin but at least he has two licks of sense.”

Jim’s been trying to train himself out of thinking about Spock in the context of things like licking.It had been funny in a subversive, petty way, to sexualize Spock when Jim’s primary set of feelings toward him involved loathing over the Kobiyashi Maru incident but now that there’s this seed of friendship and a genuine and embarrassingly urgent need to gain Spock’s approval, it’s weirder and significantly more dangerous.Plus, Jim'sreflexive response to sex stuff has always been "yes, please," and it's fucking hard enough to decondition himself from popping a friendly-ass boner at Spock as it is.Fucking Starfleet needs a "no uglies in space" policy.

"He is," Jim insists."He totally actually wants to save the fucking universe."

"Stop talking," Bones begs, pouring himself another."Just — stop making noise with your whore mouth."

Jim pouts.He's had this conversation with Bones about how now that Jim has a command position, Bones should probably refrain from saying stuff that blatantly undermines said command position.It's hard to make a point of it, though, when your chief medical officer is Leonard "Hi, my roommate just found out Hofstran semen could double as epoxy" McCoy and his first officer is fucking Spock.

"I think it's a good thing," Jim decides."I mean, it's good that Spock and I are on the same page, right?"

Bones gives him a jaundiced look."Jim, I don't think you guys are even reading the same _book_."

Jim gives Bones a dirty look, but then his communicator engages, and he hears Uhura's voice flowing and smooth in his ear saying, "Captain?You're being hailed by Starfleet," and then Bones waves for the bartender and Jim busts out his credits because it's time to face the music.

Surprise, though, when he gets to the bridge and dismisses most of the bridge crew, Spock stays put while everybody else beats feet out of the room.

Jim cocks a brow."You sure you wanna be here for this?"

"I was party to your decision," Spock says, easy and unflappable."I should bear some part in the consequences."

"Ah, but I am your commanding officer," Jim reminds him, because that's never going to get old.Not even for the reasons Spock probably thinks — which are all probably mean-spirited and shitty — but because it's Spock!He's a fucking genius!Assholes are probably knifing each other all over the God damn Federation to get him on their crew and Jim has him!"You're not obligated to take responsibility for my choices."

Spock gives him a look that is not directly translatable into a scowl."I'm sure, Captain," he says simply, and folds his hands behind his back, turns to face the viewscreen as an angry red face fills it up and shouts:

" _Jim fucking Kirk!_ "

***

After the milk run that turns into a coup, they get demoted to even more fucking tragic milk runs, including shit like ferrying children for diplomats and most recently, in a demoralizingly humiliating stroke, being asked to help cross-pollinate plants across two sister planets locked in orbit. 

It keeps all the biologists running 24-7 in an effort to beat the end of the planting cycle, and Uhura is up to her eyeballs translating messages from Phaeton XI to Phaeton XII, which share a language but have dialects so vastly different they're mutually indistinguishable.Jim, being sort of an asshole and knowing that Sulu is trapped on the bridge sweeping the Enterprise from one planet to the other — over, and over, and fucking over again — hands the comm to him and hides in the officer's mess instead.

He's in the process of playing 3D chess against himself and debating whether or not he's enough of a moral sinkhole to peruse the book Gaila gave him publicly when he hears Spock say: 

"Captain, if you are not otherwise engaged?"

"Uh," Jim says, glancing over his shoulder to see Spock tilting his head, curiously polite."Sure, what's up, Spock?"

Spock holds up a PADD."I thought we could begin working on our cooperative leadership project," he says, and Jim has to tamp down a zing at that.Just because his brain knows that's not a sex thing doesn't mean his dick can be convinced it can't be turned into one, Jim knows from long experience.

"I'm open," Jim says, and Spock takes the seat across from him at the table. 

The officer's mess is small and neat, decorated in dreamy grays and interstellar purples that are a blessing to the eyes after a full day on the searing white bridge.The walls are mostly windows outward, like all leisure quarters on the ship, and Jim spares a moment to look at Spock, backlit by the pale lights of space, looking shockingly young and very alone — and Spock _is_ very alone, is the worst of it.Initial estimates of 10,000 Vulcans remaining had been optimistic, and so far the New Vulcan colony is only 8,000-strong; there may be more, but it doesn't look likely, and Jim's secreted away a bunch of scientific articles about the vast psychic loss remaining Vulcans suffer.It's not just prurient interest because one day, Spock may accidentally betray a feeling aboard the Enterprise, and Jim needs to know the culturally appropriate way to handle that shit.

Spock sets the PADD down on the table between them."Apparently, we are to keep a log of our command," he reads.

"We do that anyway," Jim points out.They do.Apparently, it's popular reading among the admiralty — assholes, like they could do any better.

"This one is to be less clinical," Spock goes on."Not Starfleet regulation, but reflective."

They stare at each other for a little while. 

"So it should be okay if we just copy the files from the other log, right?" Jim asks.

"I don't see why that wouldn't be acceptable," Spock agrees.

"Done," Jim says, and reaches for the PADD, idly logging into the programming terminal to write a code to do it automatically."And they say we don't get along."

Spock makes an uncommitted noise."Do many people discuss our interactions?"

Jim glances up at Spock, just to check if the guy's fucking with him, because he can never tell just listening to Spock's voice.Bones says he can never tell even if he's looking at Spock's face and listening to his voice and getting a fucking Spock-to-Human translation, but Jim thinks it's pretty obvious if you just watch his eyebrows.

"Uh, yeah, Spock, it's a somewhat popular topic," Jim says.

Spock's eyebrows look almost perturbed, and Jim goes on high alert: this might be it — this might be the day Spock has an emotion.He wants to be ready for this.

"I confess I don't understand why that would be a subject of interest," Spock says.

"I mean, the Narada story got around, Spock," Jim tells him.

Spock, the fucker, just continues to stare at him, apparently uncomprehending.

"It's this human thing called 'gossip,' Spock," Jim explains."For example, certain members of our bridge crew — also known as, Chekov and Sulu — returned to Earth and told certain people — namely, fucking everybody — about how there'd been some initial friction in our professional relationship and now everybody's all taking bets on if we'll kill each other during our first year out."

"Fascinating," Spock breathes, like he really means it. 

Jim purses his lips."That doesn't bother you?That people are talking about us?"

"As the only Vulcan-Human hybrid," Spock begins easily, "I have always been the subject of discussion and speculation to which I am not personally party.I have become accustomed to it over the years."

"Yeah," Jim translates."People talked shit about me all the time, too."

Spock's eyebrows tick upward."Indeed."

"Captain Kirk?" comes Sulu's voice over the intercom in the room."Permission to crash the Enterprise into a dead moon to end the soul-crushing monotony of this mission?"

Jim chokes on a laugh, and Spock sighs, "I sense you agree it may be wise to allow Lt. Sulu to assign someone else the task of piloting the Enterprise for the moment?"

"Oh, big time, Pike just gave me this space boat," Jim laughs, and hitting his comm unit, he says, "Sulu, cut the dramatics.You may put on a baby helmsman, if that would keep you from cutting your wrists on the bridge and getting blood all over my shiny new ship."

"Thank you, sir," Sulu answers."Bless you, sir."

"If someone scratches the Enterprise, it's on your head, Sulu," Jim warns.

"If someone scratches the Enterprise and it's my fault, technically it's still on your head, sir," Sulu says cheerfully."Sulu out."

Jim glares at his comm."We should totally reprimand him for lip."

"I don't see why," Spock disagrees, already rising to his feet, taking the PADD with him, "as Lt. Sulu was only reporting fact."

"This, this right here, Spock," Jim calls after his first officer, watching Spock glide away from him, "this is why you're getting a C in that stupid class you know!"

***

_Dear Mom_ , Jim writes, _the Enterprise continues to be awesome.The crew is beginning to gel — or anyway, Cupcake says that he's having to throw fewer people into the brig to calm down anyway — and Sulu has devised an ingenious method to distract Chekov with science so he can run away.The only downside is that eventually Chekov defeats science and then realizes Sulu's gone and he sits around and makes this totally fucking tragic face for an hour; it's pretty terrible.Any advice you might have about tiny Russian genius stalkers would be appreciated.As for the First Officer situation, it's funny, we never really had a honeymoon period, but we're hitting a groove now, I think, where we get each other, or at least we're not throwing it down on the bridge anymore.Hope you're well; send along my best to Sam; say hi to the cows for me._

_Dear son,_ Jim's mom writes back, _I see you haven't apologized to Spock yet._

***

"She's really fixated on this," Jim complains, sitting on an exam table in the medical wing and kicking his legs.Bones, hunched over his desk — crudely bolted to the floor of the Enterprise, since office furniture wasn't exactly high on the list of priorities for repairs when half the fleet was in tatters — is pretending to ignore him.

Instead of addressing the pressing issue of the psychological drama of being captain of the starship Enterprise, Bones starts, "I need more silica—" and Jim cuts him off, saying, "Whatever you need, put in the paperwork, Spock knows to fast-track your supply requisitions."

Mollified, Bones says, "Well thank fuck for that."

"But remember not to abuse the privilege and go crazy ordering vibrating dildos and things," Jim says sweetly."Oh, wait, you already did."

Bones turns a gratifyingly mortified red color.  "That was a _legitimate medical tool_."

"Okay, sure," Jim says, because even though he hasn't looked up that section in the medical databases on Trallans, he still doesn't believe Bones, who is a drunk and apparently sort of a dirty bird — which is a comfort, because otherwise Jim's been friends with a prude all these years and that'd be terrible.  "Anyway — my mom.  Frankly, I think she should be on my side."

"When's your mom ever been on your side about anything?" Bones asks reasonably.

"There was that one time, in elementary school," Jim lies.  Fuck Bones anyway.  This is why having best friends you pour your heart out to can actually have a terrible downside.  "And Spock and I have reached a cooperative equilibrium — I'm not convinced that bringing that incident up again is going to do anybody any favors."

"By which you mean, you don't wanna get punched in the mouth anymore," Bones says, setting down his PADD and scrabbling around the surface of his desk for something.

"That was also an element of my decision-making process," Jim mutters.

Bones angles Jim a look, one that Jim knows well from the beginnings of many regretful courses of action that Jim has taken using Bones as something of a moral compass.  It's not that Bones is a brilliant persuasive speaker, or that at twenty-five and divorced and neck deep in a barrel of whiskey is a compass for good behavior, but he has a way of looking at Jim that conveys he neither has interest nor skin in the game, and that Jim's pussyfooting is basically just him being a pussy.

"Do you think Spock actually cares if you apologize?" Bones asks.

"I think Spock is really good at that pretending shit never happened game," Jim says, because Spock has that look about him.Although it's totally Vulcan in origin, Jim's Midwestern American roots can really relate to that sort of "repress, repress and deny" mentality.

"Right, and before this, what was the last thing your mother asked you to do?" Bones continues, unearthing a battered looking PADD with a triumphant look on his face.

Jim can't remember.  "Uh, probably something about not doing anything dumb after joining Starfleet," he says, since he and his mother aren't close, but she's been gamely interested in trying to preserve the Kirk family reputation for excellence within the Federation.

"After which you proceeded to cheat at the Kobiyashi Maru, con me into sneaking you onto a starship — "

"I didn't con you, you did that yourself — "

" — and then you lobbied a green-blooded hobgoblin who _actively hates your guts_ to be your Number One," Bones concludes, stabbing his way across the PADD.  "So what I'm saying is, Jim: you don't give a shit that your mom wants you to apologize — this thing is stuck so far up your ass because _you_ want to apologize."

Jim says, "Yeah, well, that uniform makes your ass look huge," and swans off to the bridge, where he's busy and important and the captain of the Enterprise, thanks, to find Sulu sitting in the chair trying to command Chekov to speak without an accent.It's both hilarious and culturally insensitive on so many different levels he can't even be fucked to deal with it, and opts instead to restrict Sulu and Chekov to conference room seven, since Chekov's earnest desire for Sulu's undivided attention will be punishment enough.

Spock rolls in a few minutes later, a touch early for beta shift, and says, "Captain, on my way to the bridge I fielded an SOS message from Lt. Sulu claiming you were utilizing cruel and unusual punishments upon his person."  

Jim twitches, and Uhura coughs meaningfully.  "That Sulu, such a kidder."

"Yes, I am sure Ensign Chekov's corresponding message requesting formal mediation procedures was also humorous in nature," Spock says, blithely disinterested, and settles into his chair while Jim glares out at the vast hugeness of space and fantasizes about pushing his entire crew out of airlock.

***

Pike is, on balance, actually more amused by the "formal mediation proceedings" situation than he is hellishly pissed, which Jim feels is a positive until Spock says, "Fascinating — Admiral Pike, when he was Captain Pike, used to say that was his most bloodthirsty smile."

"You know what, Spock?" Jim tells him.  They've decided to take their ass-tearing privately, in Jim's private administrative offices; he's used them all of twice since the mission started."If you have nothing constructive to contribute, feel free to leave."

Spock just tilts his head.  "I have much that is constructive, however."

"Fucking space," Jim observes, quietly and mostly to himself, and then the sound cuts on on Pike's end of the communique and Jim's left clearing his throat, saying, "Sir."

Pike, looking slightly warped from the bad camera angle, and backlighting in his San Francisco office at Starfleet headquarters, sighs.

"Kirk — why the hell is a Russian kid crying at me?"

Alarmed, Jim asks, "Is he actually crying, sir?"

"Does it matter?" Pike roars at him.  "You're four months out!  You're doing milk runs!  Why am I getting the equivalent of notes from the guidance counselor saying you're letting Sulu bully the other kids on the bridge?"

The silence from Spock's side of the room is fucking deafening, and Jim's waiting for Spock to jump in with some brilliantly cold take-down — like the last time — only Spock is staring placidly ahead, not exactly making eye contact with Pike on the screen but he isn't looking away either, and his mouth a flat, emotionless line.  This is when Jim realizes even though Spock holds up brilliantly in the face of assholes screaming at them from Starfleet headquarters about stuff they can't know anything about — because they weren't there, they didn't see how the people were suffering, and whatever their mental mathematics told them were wrong — that Pike's Spock's first, and Jim's always going to play fucking sloppy seconds to the guy.

"I erred in favor of allowing the crew to handle their own issues, sir," Jim says, through gritted teeth, feeling fucking betrayed and hurt and embarrassed, all at once, which is God damn humiliating on its own.  "I'll keep that to a minimum going forward."

"Kirk, I don't care if your entire crew kills each other," Pike yells back, "I just don't want to have to fucking hear about it from Komack like he's the president of the fucking PTA and my kid keeps being caught touching himself during recess — am I being clear?"

Jim can't help but say, "You'd be a little sad if they all killed each other."

"Spock," Pike says pointedly.

"Yes, Admiral?" Spock answers, and even though there's nothing different in his voice that Jim can put his finger on precisely, there's totally something different in his voice.

"If I asked you to hit Kirk for me, would you do it?" Pike asks.

Jim pastes his most tragic face on, and Spock says, "My apologies, Admiral, as that falls into somewhat of a gray area insofar as the chain of command goes."

"Christ on a cracker," Pike says, and motioning at someone off screen, says, "You two — _handle this_.  And Spock?"

"Yes, Admiral?" Spock repeats.

Pike stares right into the camera and smirks, saying, "Stop being a little shit and letting him step in it, will you?" just before the picture cuts out.

There's a long terrible, awkward silence in the semi-dark of the conference room after the video feed goes, and Jim's carefully organizing all the thoughts in his head into coherent sentences, so he won't do anything batshit like accusing Spock of purposefully sabotaging him like this is fucking eighth grade or anything.

"So when he said, 'step in it,'" Jim asks.  He can hear himself gritting his teeth.

"I'm sure I have no idea to what Admiral Pike is referring," Spock answers smoothly, "as I of course reported Lt. Sulu's distress signal promptly."

Jim considers the possibility of restricting _Spock_ to his quarters, but then his official log for the day would have to involve admitting he'd grounded his first officer, and while he's pretty resigned to being the butt most of Starfleet's jokes, he's not prepared for that level of mocking yet.

"Ugh," Kirk says, "just — dismissed."

"As you wish, Captain," Spock says agreeably, and is dismissed.

***

_Cmd. Spock, despite having agreed to take on a posting as my first officer, clearly harbors either ill will toward me or a total lack of trust, still.Obviously, complaining now or asking to switch with one of the other guys would be quitter talk, plus I am stupidly fond of him anyway,_ Jim appends, that night, to the automatically populated log entry for the day. 

He stares at his PADD, at the open folder that stores the schoolwork he and Spock share for their bullshit Discourses in Management (Lab) class, and he wonders what the hell any of them are doing, pretending to be adults here.

And then the cursor on the screen jumps, flickers, and Jim watches words begin crawling across the screen:

_I would not have agreed to take on the position of your first officer had I harbored either ill will or a lack of trust in you,_ the letters spell out.   _However, I do have reservations about the efficaciousness of us as a team if, this long into our collaboration, we share mutual doubts about the partnership._

"Oh, fuck me," Jim says, out loud and to himself, powering down his PADD and staring at the dark screen like a fucking idiot, because no matter how far technology advances, Jim Kirk's will always reflexively subscribe to the "tuck that shit under the mattress" principle of hiding stuff that's already in medias trainwreck.

Unlike seventh grade, however, it's unlikely that Jim will be able to successfully avoid Spock on any sort of long term basis; unlike Angela Kelley, Spock is neither particularly enamored of him, nor in Mrs. Langston's class and thereby insulated from Jim in Mr. Hotchkiss's class down the hall.  Plus, there's that thing where _fuck fuck fuck fuck_  how is Jim such a fucking _idiot?_ This is Spock!  Spock probably does homework as a way to wind himself up!  If, in fact, Vulcans do that sort of thing!  

Out of what has to be totally morbid fascination, Jim powers on the PADD again, stares at the welcome interface and the biometric key for a long minute, because he reminds himself he is the captain of a motherfucking space ship, and keys himself into the file again.

_However, I do have reservations about the efficaciousness of us as a team if, this long into our collaboration, we share mutual doubts about the partnership,_ Jim rereads.   _Having consulted with various texts about the challenges of leadership and finding them wanting, I presented the question to Admiral Pike for advice —_

"God damn it," Jim says out loud.

_— and found his suggestions (which included, among other things, encouragement to express feelings to which I, as a Vulcan, am not party) wanting as well.  I confess, this is a challenge I was not prepared to face._

Jim is completely aware this is the grown-up equivalent of passing notes, but given the option of having to have this conversation face to face, or protected by several walls, Jim is going to be forced to opt for strategic cowardice.

_My doubts are more personal than mutual,_ Jim admits, which sucks, and hurts, because it's one thing to have everybody else look at him askance, it's another entirely to have to admit it to Spock.  Jim thinks Spock is an asshole about 98 percent of the time, but that 2 percent of approval is so good he can't help but keep going back for more abuse.   _You're the one with more comprehensive experience; obviously there is going to be doubt on my end if we can't work together effectively._ He considers.   _Or if you feel compelled to set me up to get in trouble._

There's a long enough pause that Jim thinks maybe Spock has spoken his piece and turned off his PADD for the night, moved onto other projects, and that he still has time to take back the thought before it turns into a sprawling discussion of their individual shortcomings and the obvious differences in management style and how shitty and horrible it is that half the fucking fleet died and they were all promoted beyond their competency.

_I take issue with that characterization,_ Spock writes.  

_So that Sulu and Chekov shitshow — you had no idea that shit was going to go down,_  Jim writes, and wonders why — still — no one has invented a font for sarcasm.  

There's a pause before Spock writes, _I had been warned to be respectful of different management styles, and thus have tried to be respectful of yours, even when your decisions have not aligned with my judgments or my experience._

_I don't know if anybody ever told you this, Spock, but humans like it when people stop them from actively making assholes of themselves,_  Jim says, and he can't tell if he means that sarcastically or with perfect earnestness.  There's a level of hypocrisy here, too, because for most of Jim's life, he's ignored all the everybody's warnings about just this sort of thing.

When Spock does write back, a few seconds later, all it says is, _Noted_.

***

"What do you think that means?" Jim asks in the mostly-empty bridge.  

They've successfully completed their mission, snuck in just under the wire with planting season, and his crew is taking a half-day on the surface, leaving a skeleton crew to man the Enterprise.  Well, a skeleton crew and all bridge staff determined by Bones to likely collapse and die from anaphylaxis if they were to fuck off down to the planet's surface and partake of their lush harvest and booze — translation, a half-dozen people on restriction and Jim.

"I mean — who the fuck even says 'noted' anymore, right?" Jim asks.

"Jesus Christ," Bones mutters where he's slumped in Spock's chair, because in addition to being a frank coward about space travel, Bones has been cursed with an incurious mind, and he'd abstained from going planetside to make sure Jim didn't try to sneak there.  "I don't get your obsession with that green-blooded hobgoblin."

Ignoring him, Jim says, "Because 'noted' could mean so many different things.Maybe it's a translation issue with Standard."He pauses."Maybe I should ask Uhura."

"Or maybe you could just hold still and point at your dick so she has a clear idea of where to punch you," Bones suggests sweetly.

The rest of the crew take their sweet time returning to the Enterprise, but when they do come back, they're sweet and buzzed from liquor, red-cheeked and happy, and when Spock passes Jim in the hallway, he smells like smoke and sugar, the heavy spice of the Phaeten cuisines.

"How was it," Jim asks him, falling into step with his first officer, "down planetside?"

"The Phaetens are a charmingly post-technological society," Spock says, and his voice sounds rough, scraped raw, like he's been shouting or smoking or fucking."They have the technological capability to overcome many of their difficulties but opt to accomplish things in a more traditional manner — it is a fascinating cultural decision."  


Jim smirks."Why?Because both our cultures engineer the crap outta everything?"

"There is something to be said for embracing a lack of control," Spock replies."It is illogical to deceive ourselves about ever attaining total control of anything."

"But there's a vast difference between total control and total _lack_ of control," Jim feels compelled to point out as they stride down the corridors, watching ensigns and lieutenants and corporals and nurses and scientists and all the good people of the Enterprise bustle.It's the 15-minute overlap between swing shift and late, and it's always madness in the hallways, people darting into and out of their rooms, running across the ship to their posts or back to their quarters, and Jim loves the strange domesticity of it, the rhythm of the starship. 

"Of course," Spock agrees."I was taught as a child, though, that the illusion of total control can be far more damaging than relinquishing it."

They're rounding the corner, close to Jim's quarters, and soon they'll run out of hallway and Jim will run out of excuses to keep up this line of discussion.One day he's going to figure out why he's so hungry for Spock's attention; until then, he'll just enjoy it, this chemical rush so much like the first spark of infatuation.

"How's that?" Jim asks.

Spock raises an eyebrow at him, stopping purposefully in front of Jim's quarters."In the event that you relinquish control, at least you are aware of it.Operating under the delusion you have complete grasp of a situation oftentimes leaves one ill-prepared for surprises."

"You look like the type of person to hate surprises," Jim says, because it's true.

Spock only tilts his head to one side."Not all surprises," he says, easy and unforced."I was most heartened by your invitation to inform you when your behavior is less than optimal."

"Geez, Spock," Jim tells him, "don't go overboard — wouldn't want to swell my head."  


"That is a reasonable concern, Captain," Spock answers, serious as a grave."Consider the comment withdrawn."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Before you ask: I have no idea what the plot to this was supposed to be.


End file.
